F Paul Wilson - Novel 10 (44 page)

 
          
She'd
sent serfs and one of her get out to find the source of the explosion, to see
if that was what had done in Gregor. They'd returned with a tale of a blasted
house with Gregor's head spiked on a piece of splintered wood in the front yard
and his body in pieces within.

 
          
These
vigilantes had taken to making bombs. That was the real reason she was down
here in the basement. The Post Office had thick granite walls. Even if they
somehow managed to toss a bomb through the front doors—closed, locked, and
guarded now—it would have no effect down here.

 
          
Jules
returned and closed the door behind him. "He's next door, waiting."

 
          
Olivia
nodded, took a breath, then made her entrance. She found Artemis, his back to
her, standing among the beds and cots that her get had moved into what had been
a storage space. This was where she spent the daylight hours.

 
          
"Bonsoir,
Artemis."

 
          
Artemis
turned. He grinned and stared at her with his one good eye.

 
          
"English,
Olivia. My French is about as good as your Greek."

 
          
Olivia
tried not to stare at his ruined eye. With his curly black hair and olive skin,
he'd probably been handsome once. Too handsome, perhaps. But that eye—she had
bathed in blood and had cut off heads, she'd ripped still-beating hearts from
chests, but she found that dead eye repulsive. Olivia had lost her left little
finger once—an accident with a sliding glass door—but it had grown back. She,
like other undead, could regenerate most lost body parts, except of course a
head or a heart. But certain types of injury did not heal.

 
          
Artemis
had been a real up and comer in Franco's get until he allowed a child he'd been
about to sup on to jab a crucifix into his eye. He might have lived it down if
the eye had regenerated, but wounds from holy objects never healed. His
puckered scar and sunken socket were eternal reminders of his blunder, and he'd
sunk to the rank of one of Franco's get-guards and errand boys.

 
          
"Very
well, Artemis," she said, switching to English. "But I just want you
to know that I had no control over Gregor. Whatever he did, he did on his own.
I am in no way responsible for what happened to him. You can tell Franco
that."

 
          
Artemis
laughed. "Franco did not send me here about Gregor. He wanted to let you
know that he has personally broken the back of the insurrection."

 
          
"How,
pray, did he do that?"

 
          
"By
capturing the priest himself, the one who took over your little church
here."

 
          
"Not
my church. It was Gregor's responsibility."

 
          
"But
it happened while you were here on your inspection tour. Don't worry. That is
of no import to Franco."

 
          
Olivia
seated herself on the bed where she spent her hours of daysleep.

 
          
"Broken
their backs, has he? What did Franco think of Gregor's idea that the insurgents
in the church and the vigilantes were two separate groups?"

 
          
"He
gave it the amount of consideration it deserved, which is none at all. The
priest didn't even bother to deny that he was part of the vigilantes."

 
          
Olivia
took some small satisfaction in being right, but she wondered . . .

 
          
"How
is merely capturing the priest going to break the back of this situation?"

 
          
Artemis
smiled. "Franco has turned the priest—not by himself, but by one of his
pet ferals. He was delivered back to his own rectory less than an hour ago.
He's been hidden in the basement. Come sundown he'll be one of us and will
start to prey on his own followers. And as days go by he'll become increasingly
depraved looking, increasingly vicious and feral. Isn't it simply
delicious?"

 
          
"Perhaps.
But it's complicated. I prefer simpler, direct solutions. Why doesn't he just
burn them out and capture them?"

 
          
"You
know Franco. He'd deem a frontal assault unworthy of his intellect. He saw too
many Dr. Mabuse films while he was living in Germany, I think. Sees himself as
the Grand Manipulator, the Demonic Maestro, the Great Orchestrator of life and
death and undeath. He must work his coups with style, with elan."

 
          
"Elan
is all fine and good, but I'd much prefer to see this over and done with."

 
          
"But
you're not in charge, are you?"

 
          
Olivia
didn't dignify that remark with an answer. "So what are we to do then? Sit
around and hope this undead priest follows Franco's script?"

 
          
"We'll
be providing direction. We'll watch after sundown and give him a little help if
he needs it. Sometime during the next night or two—before he starts losing his
mind—we'll question him about the vigilantes. Just in case there are cells
outside the church. After that, he's on his own."

 
          
"I'm
not so sure I like the idea of a feral running loose."

 
          
"Good
point. He may become uncontrollable. If his followers don't get him first, we
may have to put him down ourselves."

 
          
Olivia
had to smile. "Not much of a future for this priest. What's his name, by
the way?"

 
          
Artemis
shrugged. "You know, I never thought to ask."

 
          
"Well,
whoever he is, he deserves everything that's coming to him."

 
          
LACEY
. . .

 
          
Startled
out of sleep by a hand shaking her shoulder and a strange voice whispering in
her ear, Lacey came up swinging.

 
          
"Easy,
Lacey," said a woman's voice. "Easy. You're safe. No one's going to
hurt you."

 
          
Lacey
blinked. A small room, a single candle, and some stranger bending over her. No
. . . not a stranger . . . she recognized her now. The one who'd led her back
to the church, who'd said she was a nun. Lacey groaned. Her head throbbed, she
hurt all over, especially between her legs.

 
          
"Where—?"

 
          
"You're
in the convent. Listen to me. Something terrible has happened and—" Her
voice broke. She blinked, swallowed, then said. "I need your help."

 
          
Lacey
glanced at the window. Still dark out there. "Can't it wait till
morning?"

 
          
The
nun—what was her name? Carrie? No, Carole with an e—shook her head.
"Morning will be too late. We have to act now before anyone finds
out."

 
          
"About
what?"

 
          
"Your
uncle."

 
          
Lacey
listened in a daze, struggling to understand Carole's story, but the words
seemed to congeal in the air, clumping together into indecipherable masses.
Something about her Uncle Joe ... something about him being—

 
          
"Dead?
No, no! No! You can't be serious! He can't be! He can't!"

 
          
"He
is," Carol said. A tear ran down her cheek. "Believe me, Lacey, he
is."

 
          
"No!"
She wanted to smash this crazy woman's face for lying to her. Her Uncle Joe
couldn't be dead!

 
          
"But
he won't stay dead. By tomorrow night he'll be one of them."

 
          
"Not
Unk! He'd never!"

 
          
"He'll
have no choice."

 
          
Lacey
tried to stand but crumbled back onto the bed. Her legs didn't want to support
her. "But if they can turn him ... make him one of them, then what's the
use?"

 
          
"That's
exactly how they want you to feel. And that's exactly why we must move him away
from here and save him from that hell."

 
          
"We?"
Lacey's stomach twisted and bile rose in her throat. "You mean ... ?"

 
          
Carole
was nodding. "There's no other way."

 
          
"No!
I can't!"

 
          
"I
can't move him alone, Lacey. The parishioners must never know, must never find
him. They must think he died fighting for them. If they learn he's become the
enemy, that he's preying on them ..."

 
          
"But
put a stake through his heart? I can't!"

 
          
"You
can't not, Lacey. Not if you have the slightest bit of regard for who he was
and what he stood for and how he'd want to be remembered."

 
          
In
that instant Lacey knew Carole was right. Her Uncle Joe had lived his life by a
certain set of rules, not simply avoiding evil but actively trying to do good.
She couldn't let these undead vermin make a lie and a mockery of his entire
life. Stopping that would not be something she did to him, it would be for him.

 
          
Somehow,
somewhere, she found the strength to rise from the bed. Let's go.

 
          
"Can
you get a car?"

 
          
Lacey
nodded. "We brought in a bunch of them to block the streets. There's
extras. I'm sure I can get one."

 
          
"Good.
Keep the lights out and drive it around to the side door of the rectory, then
come inside. I'll be waiting in the basement."

 
          
The
next ten or fifteen minutes would forever be a blur in Lacey's memory. Finding
the keys to an old Lincoln Town Car and sneaking it around the block remained
clear, but after that. . . creeping down into that dank cellar .. . seeing her
uncle's lifeless, bloodless face when Carole unwrapped the top of the sheet—it
was him, really, really him—and then struggling his dead weight up the stairs .
. . placing him in the trunk of the car . . . hearing the clank of the tools
Carole had found in the caretaker's shed as she carefully placed them on the
back seat. . . slumping in the passenger seat as Carole drove them away toward
the brightening horizon . . .

 
          
And
thinking about her Uncle Joe . ..

 
          
The
earliest memory was riding on his back, he barely a teenager and she barely in
kindergarten. A flash of watching from a front row pew as he took his Holy
Orders and officially became a priest. And then later, much clearer memories of
long conversations about faith and God and the meaning of life with her doing
most of the talking because no one would listen to her, only him, and Uncle Joe
not agreeing but giving her his ear, letting her finish without cutting her off
and dissing her dissidence.

 
          
And
now he was gone. Her sounding board, her last anchor... gone, erased. She felt
adrift.

 
          
The
car stopped. Returning to the present, Lacey wiped her eyes and looked around.
They were at the beach. A boardwalk lay straight ahead. She'd been here a few
days ago.

 
          
They'd
arrived at the edge of the continent... to do the unthinkable . . . in order to
prevent the unspeakable.

 
          
"I
don't know if I can go through with this," Lacey said.